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Piazza on Acquisition
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6 thoughts on “Piazza on Acquisition”
If you are forced to do homework by your school, make sure it is input-based, not output. I don’t know if derivatives are output but it seems that it is based on response to it.
My school requires me to give 15 minutes of homework per night. (There are also always comparisons to the Spanish & French workloads — they get lots of workbook pages). Ben, at Annick Chen’s suggestion, told me about World Language Games. This is a customized, online-based set of numerous games. Some are word/phrase based, some sentence-based, and some story-based. There is also a “Study Guide” feature where you can put lists of vocab and sentence examples for those who really want a list of what they’ve been doing in class.
The data entry part is the most time-consuming, but then it’s there forever. You turn “on” and “off” content and there are reports about student activity. It’s not super-fancy in its appearance, but it’s fine. It’s worked very well for me. I wrote a blog entry about it at: http://tprsforchinese.blogspot.com/2013/10/skritter-and-other-homework.html
Mike Ahrens is the programmer, and he’s very open to teacher ideas (he created a new game within 3 days based on an idea I shared with him). You could contact him at mikeahrensWLG@gmail.com.
My hwk criteria:
1) Easy.
2) Not more than 20 min/week total
3) Like Diane N. said, “input-based.”
Why?
1) If it’s remotely difficult– by which in a TPRS class we mean “they don’t understand”– lots of kids will either copy or not do it.
2) Kids are WAY overburdened already with hwk. 5 hrs/day of school plus they have subjects where they can actually work independently AND productively– like math, English, socials, sciences, so they should be focused on those. Plus lots of them need family time, physical activity time, etc, plus poor people are working. I don’t want languages to be a burden: I want kids to show up, tune in, and learn, with no “oh GOD Spanish = homework” feelings.
3) Reps of meaningful interesting C.I. build acquisition. Writing, like speech, is the RESULT, not cause, of acquisition.
My hwk basically boils down to read and translate (a 10-12 sentence story) or write and illustrate a comic of a story. In both cases, kids are reading something they understand.
chris
Thanks for the reality check. I wasn’t really thinking about the FORCED issue as being central to the problem. I think I will begin by making my assignments optional, give credit to those who turn work in (and expand the options for independent work), but not mark down those who choose not to.
If you can get away with just optional homework, I think that’s ideal. They can do it if they feel they need more help/exposure. Very progressive, really.
I’ll be devil’s advocate here– if the kids do hwk for “extra credit” we have a problem. If we measure kids by what they can do, why mark hwk? If homework helps them learn something, why are we “marking” homework? Shouldn’t thier “mark” show up in improved skills when they get evaluated?
These are Assessment For Learning ideas that Rick Wormelli etc raise.
Chris
I understand your situation is unique John, I hope you find a good solution with all the helpful advice here.
This reminded me of something that Grant Boulanger said in his presentation at MCTLC last month… (paraphrasing of course) “I ask my kids to show up and give me 50 minutes of rigorous communication in class, and I don’t take any of their time outside of school.” It’s a shared sentiment among many here, myself included, and the more we make it sound reasonable and obvious as he did, the more it will BE reasonable and obvious for other teachers, and parents, and students, and admins.